Online Papers - Brian Weatherson

Assertion, Knowledge and Action 372
(2010). In academic papers, we typically make assertions that we do not know. We
don’t know that most of the things we’ve said here are true. (Before the last sentence
we’re not sure we knew that any of the things we said were true.) But that’s because
knowledge is a bad standard for academic discourse. Debate and discussion would
atrophy if we had to wait until we had knowledge before we could present a view. So,
it seems that assertion can properly outrun knowledge in academic debate.
Academic assertions raised a problem for The Knowledge Rule because proper
assertion in the context of inquiry can outrun knowledge. But note that action in
such a context can also properly outrun knowledge. It would slow down learning
dramatically if people didn’t engage in various projects that really only make sense if
some hypothesis is true. So, academics will study in archives, conduct experiments,
write papers, etc. etc., and do so on the basis of reasons they no more know than we
know the truth of the speculative claims of this paper. And this is all to the good;
the alternative is a vastly inferior alternative to academia as we know it. So, in some
fields, action requires much less than knowledge. Happily, in those fields, assertion
also requires much less than knowledge. Indeed, the shortfalls in the two cases seem
to parallel nicely. And this parallel is neatly captured by The Action Rule.
As we said, none of this is a knockdown case for The Action Rule. Our primary
purpose is to argue against The Knowledge Rule. As long as the Action Rule
is plausible, we have defeated the abductive argument for The Knowledge Rule that
was discussed at the start of this section, and we think we’ve done enough to show
it is plausible. We also hope we’ve made a successful case for moving the study of
assertability away from rules like The Knowledge Rule, and instead have it be more
tightly integrated with our best theories about evidence and action.